My goodness, but the Southern Baptist Convention is just a bastion of pure hatred these days, isn't it? It's not that they demand that the DC Baptist Convention support their political positions that surprises me; after all, that kind of comes with having signed the convention agreement, now doesn't it? No, the surprise is that the SBC is demanding that DC "must agree not to promote the cultural festivals that include non-Christian religious denominations" -- a reference, Haggray said, to D.C. support of the annual interfaith service honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. I mean, what the hell does SBC have against King? For that matter, since when did SBC have that big a problem with interfath festivals? They've become that bigoted and intolerant in recent years?
It seems a very bad political miscalculation to me, although I suppose that's arguable. There's simply no way that SBC can come out of this looking well. And, of course, they don't want to. They don't care. But if there are any more liberal or less observant congregations still inside SBC, they may start looking at other affiliation options. And granted that SBC pays its churches according to the affiliation agreement, but SBC has to get its money from somewhere. The various churches must pay some role in that. Logically, the fewer churches, the less money SBC pays out, but also the less money they take in. At some point, alienating their left wing (so to speak) has to start costing more than its worth.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!